


our book won't close

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22284535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: During the spring, Alyosha and Arrell meet one last time.
Relationships: Alyosha/Arrell (Friends at the Table)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	our book won't close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3RatMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3RatMoon/gifts).



> happy secret samol Ronnie!!! I was so excited to get your prompts and, very predictably, I decided to write alyarr. thanks for always being such a good pal and for being as emotional over these two as I am. I hope you like it!

Alyosha doesn’t dream anymore. He used to all the time, both in waking and in sleeping. He dreamt of fantastic futures, better worlds. He dreamt of a Hieron brought together in unity and joy. He dreamt of a small cottage, a steady shared warmth.

But now he only sees the world as it is. The possibilities that spring from his hammer are hungry, all-consuming things. It’s not what he would have wished for as a younger man, but he has not been a young man in a very long time. 

Alyosha used to dream, and he used to linger in nostalgia, endlessly warm and comforting, like the cocoa he would make for himself and his Tutor on particularly cold days. A bulwark against the dark. When he felt particularly lonely, or cold, or simply had nothing else to think of, he pondered better days. His brightest memories, those first few years he spent with Arrell: long languid walks by the river, endless nights spent with their heads bent over book after book, the smell of ink, and the feel of it on his cheek as Arrell wiped it away.

The way that Arrell would look at him, sometimes, as though Alyosha himself was something entirely new, an undiscovered history his fingers itched to write. 

The world then seemed full of stunning possibility, a bud yet to bloom. And perhaps it did bloom, for those few years. But no flower blooms forever. In the end, they all must rot away into nothing.

So Alyosha doesn’t look to the past, and he doesn’t dream of the future, and when there are new footsteps in his forge, he knows that it can only be the solid present truth. 

It is not Ephrim, his last interrupter; Ephrim’s steps were careful and precise, but deliberately heavy, projecting his presence. These are light, nearly soundless. Alyosha sees no reason to let them interrupt his work, the endless pounding of the hammer, the ache in his arms and his heart. There is always, always more work to be done. 

Moments pass, and then minutes. Alyosha nearly forgets that he isn’t alone. And then the voice speaks, cracked and dry but as deep as it ever was. Alyosha would recognize it anywhere, at any time. Sometimes he feels as though he would have recognized it before they even met; that perhaps the first time Alyosha heard him speak, his voice was familiar already, like a song that already lived in his heart. 

“Pupil?”

Alyosha drops his hammer. 

The noise it makes hitting the ground is somehow louder than the sound of it at work. That shouldn’t be true. But perhaps Alyosha has just become used to the regular clamor of the spring. The duller thud of metal hitting the earth beneath his feet is unfamiliar.

So is Arrell’s face, thinner than it once was, creased by time and age and something else. Alyosha thinks that if he were to look in a mirror, he might see it on his own features, too.

Seeing him again is like opening his eyes into the sun after too long spent in the dark. Alyosha opens his mouth to speak. But the words flee from his grasp. They never used to do that. He says nothing. 

And so this time, Arrell breaks the silence between them. That isn’t quite right either. It was always Alyosha who bridged that gap, who reached out into the ever growing spaces between them, who worked so hard to mend the fraying seams, over and over and over.

“Pupil,” he says again. “Alyosha. What is this place?”

There’s no answer Alyosha can give that isn’t evident in everything around them: the forge, verdant and alive. But Arrell’s words have always helped him find his own. “It’s where I do my work. So perhaps you would call it my study.” How long has his own voice sounded like that? There’s something cracked in it now, like leaves giving way under a booted foot. 

For years—has it been years?—he’s been distracted from the things about the world he used to focus on so myopically. Small, tiny, inconsequential things: the way air burns going in and out of his lungs, the way his eyes ache, his heart fluttering as though it wants to escape his ribs. Now he can feel nothing else. Was it always like this? 

He can hardly remember. 

He wrote this feeling down once. _Mosaics missing embellishments. To miss someone._

Arrell is staring at him now. He takes a step forward. His eyes are so intent on Alyosha. He would have done anything, once, to have those eyes so completely focused on him. And it’s not so different now to have achieved it; it is still a look that makes Alyosha feel as though he is a piece of parchment left too close to the candle, seconds away from catching alight. But the fire never used to ache. 

“How did you get here?”

“It was a long time ago.” Alyosha looks down at the anvil, at the hammer at his feet. “I suppose you could say Samothes brought me here.”

Arrell stops his approach perhaps two feet away from Alyosha. He wants to come closer, Alyosha can see it. But something holds him back. “The spring,” he says. “Was it your doing?”

A vine creeps forward. They both watch it in that same staggering silence, as it wraps its way around Arrell’s ankle, tentatively and then tenderly. 

“Yes,” says Alyosha, as if he needs to, with the truth of it there for them both to see. “Isn’t this what you always wanted? To save Hieron itself?”

“Hieron is crumbling,” Arrell says, his tone sharp. Alyosha closes his eyes. He used to hate when Arrell spoke like this. The nostalgia of it now is a comfort. “Your _spring_ is helping.”

“It’s strange,” says Alyosha. “I always thought we would understand each other someday. I believed it. And now I do understand you, the man you once were—and yet you’ve moved on without me. Is that how we were always meant to be? Caught in an orbit, but forever out of each other’s reach?” It seems cruel; the kind of cruelty Alyosha once never believed of the world, not when he still walked in Samothes’s light. 

Arrell’s hand is on his cheek. Alyosha turns his face into it, as natural as a flower reaching for the sun, and when he closes his eyes, just for a moment, the years and misery and absences between them are nothing. They are on a hill bathed in moonlight, parting for what Alyosha was sure would not, could not be the last time; they are eating a quiet breakfast, each reading their own papers with ankles hooked together; they are being introduced, Alyosha looking up into Arrell’s face and hearing his voice like a melody he’s always wanted to know, and understanding at once that this moment would matter to him, forever, and not yet knowing why.

He never really stopped learning the reason why. 

And when he opens his eyes nothing has changed. Arrell is looking at him carefully, and he is as much a man consumed by despair as he ever was. Part of Alyosha always knew that. But this is the first time he’s ever felt it to the bone. 

“I’m here,” Arrell says. His thumb strokes Alyosha’s cheek. “You are within my reach. You always have been.” 

“But you won’t stay.”

“I know a spell,” he says. “I can bring you out of this place,” and Alyosha feels something he hasn’t for a very long time: he feels the urge to laugh. That was always what Arrell said, year after year: _I know a spell that will take care of that_. The world was only clay to be molded by his hands. The course of their lives has been so long, so wide-ranging; and yet simple truths remain. Time has weathered them both, but Arrell will always be who he is. 

Alyosha used to dream of a different, better world. The world is certainly different; it remains to be seen whether it can ever be better. And Arrell is just the same.

“Alyosha,” says Arrell. “Pupil.” His hand is still on Alyosha’s cheek, cradling it, and Alyosha realizes his laughter has given way to tears. He used to know the difference. He’s not sure he does anymore.

“Tutor,” says Alyosha. He hardly recognizes the word from his own mouth. “Do you think the world can ever truly change? Or are we all merely caught up in cycles, endlessly repeating the same mistakes over and over?” He looks down at the anvil, the hammer, at his own creations, borne of divine blood. “I wanted to make something new. Something that would save us. The way that you did. But maybe that, too, is only another mistake.”

“So come with me. Your spring isn’t going to save anyone,” says Arrell. 

“Maybe not,” says Alyosha. “But it means there will be something instead of nothing, once this is all over. Maybe that’s the most we can hope for. What’s your alternative? For us to run and hide away? You know I won’t do that. My answer hasn’t changed.”

“I have a plan,” says Arrell, so earnestly and horribly himself. “Won’t you _listen_?”

“No,” Alyosha says. “I’ve wasted too long already.”

“Alyosha—”

“My work has to come first. Isn’t that what you always used to say?”

Alyosha turns away. He picks up the hammer. Over the sounds of the forge, he does not hear the soft footfalls as Arrell walks away.

It’s not until much later that Alyosha finds the letter Arrell left for him. The sight is so familiar that he almost laughs again. He was right: nothing has changed at all.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on twitter at luckydicekirby, every so often i just tweet "A RIVER IN MY HEART" and then start crying


End file.
